Rising Through the Ranks
by Ardwynna Morrigu
Summary: [Complete]Glimpses into Sephiroth's life before the game.
1. White Linen

**The Challenge:** To loosen up the Author's writing style, to produce chapters in no more than two (2) sittings, one to write, one more to edit, if necessary, and to simply have fun with the idea without getting caught up in attempting perfection of phrase.

**The Reason:** To push the Author's limits and expand her boundaries.

**The Story:** A series of glimpses into Sephiroth's life before the game. Only glimpses, no unified plot.

**The Concept:** A chapter for each belt color in the Author's  taekwondo club, skipping the stripes. Please do not howl that there is no chapter for orange or brown. The author's TKD Club does not follow that system. 

**The Disclaimer:** FFVII is the property of Square Enix. No monetary gain is made or sought from this work. 

White Linen 

"Dane!" Dr. Hojo paced around the dark laboratory, aggravated beyond belief by the noise. "DANE!" He stuck his head out of the door and peered down the roughly hewn corridor. As he had hoped, a pair of feet hurried down the rickety stairs at the end of the tunnel. The stiff white shape of a lab coat was visible in the weak light long before Hojo could discern features, but the feet beneath it wore shiny, black shoes. Hojo had been hoping to see a pair of scruffy sneakers. "Damn it!" Hojo turned away from the door. "Where the hell is that boy?"

"What's the matter?" Dr. Gast heaved as he flew into the small lab.  

Hojo scowled over his shoulder at the man and yelled over the racket. "It's nothing you should have to worry yourself over, Gast. Where's Dane?"

"Dane's gone. What's wrong with the baby?" The raucous wailing instantly grew louder. Hojo clapped both hands over his ears, completely unable to stand the crying. He did not seem about to answer so Gast shuffled around behind the desk to check for himself.

The baby lay squalling in a bassinet on the floor. Its little hands were curled into tight fists and its skin was flushed with infant rage and discomfort. It's skin looked so pink beneath the pale downy hair. Gast stood over the bassinet and scratched his head. There was nothing wrong that he could see. Then he smelled it. 

"Oh goodness!" He stepped back out of the way, waving his hands to clear away the stench. "Diapers, change the diapers. Where are the diapers, Hojo?"

"How the hell should I know? I'm a scientist, not a nursemaid!" The gaunt man rubbed his forehead and walked further away. "This part of the project is Dane's responsibility. Where's he gone off to?"

Gast followed his associates lead into the bookshelf-lined tunnel. "He's just gone. He left a note and didn't say where."

Hojo paused and lifted his head. He turned slowly. "You mean he's gone for good?"

Gast's brow furrowed in exhaustion as he nodded. "In the note he said that he didn't want to be a part of this anymore, even if it is for the benefit of mankind. No word of where he went. I've been asking around for him all morning. I think he skipped town."

"Dammit!" Hojo swore again and stormed further into the library, away from the infant's persistent cries. "If only that blasted woman hadn't died on the table," he muttered as he went. "Things like this should be _her_ job, but no, Lucy had to up and die just as the project really gets going!" He reached the solid wood desk at the end of the tunnel and banged his fist on it in frustration.

Gast stopped in the hallway to polish his glasses on the sleeve of his labcoat. "It's not the end of the world. We'll just request a new assistant and in the meantime," he rubbed furiously at a stubborn spot. "In the meantime, we'll just have to manage on our own."

"And what about Dane?" Hojo fumed. "We can't have that young fool running freely across the countryside. He knows too much about the project."

"Believe me, I know that." Gast put his glasses back on. "I've already notified the Turks. They'll be a few hours behind him, coming all the way from the city, but they know their work." He sighed. "We wouldn't be in such a pickle if Vincent hadn't disappeared on us. You haven't heard from him, have you?"

Hojo turned away. "I've heard nothing." Gast suspected there was more to it than that, but he knew he would get nothing more out of his tight-lipped colleague. Specimen One's cries echoed down the tunnel and seemed to grow louder in the silence.

"Well, first things first." Gast straightened his tie and headed back towards the lab. "We have to change the diaper." He turned around to look at the other scientist. Hojo had not moved. "Come on, now," Gast coaxed. "It is your son, after all." 

Hojo rolled his eyes and pushed himself off from the desk. "Where did that boy leave the clean diapers?" Gast paused again. He really did not know. All the tedious caregiving business had been the assistant's job. 

He folded his arms and held his chin in one hand. Where had he last seen diapers? "Check the clothes line in the yard." It was the only likely place he could think of. "I think Dane washed a bundle before he left." Lucrecia – let her spirit rest in peace – had gone into a full-scale nesting phase in the few weeks before her terrible delivery. She had lovingly embroidered the name she and Hojo had picked out for the specimen upon each and every item of clothing, that she had somehow acquired between checkups and procedures. Gast suspected that the doting young Turk had done most of the shopping but had remained silent on that issue. It was not his place to speak.

Hojo grumbled as he walked  out the door, but it was half-hearted. The dingy, little lab was as far as one could get from outside but it was a chance to get away from the noise. Gast winced as the door slammed shut and gingerly walked over to the source of the crying. 

He had to stop for a moment while still a few feet away. "Odin's crazy horse, it's true. How can something so small make such a big stink?" He steeled himself up for the task and took the final step. He grabbed the bassinet and balanced it on one hip as he cleared the tools and instruments off the workbench. Then he dropped the bassinet on it with neither ceremony nor care. Specimen One cried even louder at the impact. Gast had not supposed that it was possible. 

He put one hand in the bassinet and attempted to unfurl the baby's fingers. It was ridiculously hard work. Already, the child had strength beyond its age. Without warning, the child stopped crying and the little hands opened and closed, capturing the doctor's forefinger in a sneak attack. "Hey, now," Gast warned, though he was more alarmed himself. "That's my finger. Let go." 

The baby opened its eyes instead of its hands, but showed no sign of letting go. It only stared at the captured digit, curious and interested. There was no indication that the child had been screaming loud enough to wake the dead only a few seconds ago. Gast leaned closer in surprise. The infant gaze shifted to meet his eyes. 

Gast was speechless. Those green eyes were so familiar. True, they were younger than he last knew them, and bore a glow that Lucrecia had not possessed, not until her last agonizing moments of delivery. Gast sighed and let his chin drop to rest on the edge of the bassinet. Lucrecia had picked it from a catalogue for her child. The young Turk had helped her open the package when it came. Hojo had just been glad that there was something to throw the child in at night. And Gast? He had to admit, he hadn't paid too much attention to the matter.

The child began to whimper again, as if it could sense the turn in the man's thoughts. Gast put his other hand in to pat the baby's head. "There, there, now," he mumbled, surprised to hear his own voice. "It's okay. What happened to your mommy wasn't your fault. We should have taken better care of her." Gast felt a great weight upon his shoulders. "I should have listened to her near the end." 

The child stared at him with a wide, blank gaze that could only be innocence. The child would never know how much his mother had grown to love him. He would never know a mother's care. Gast shook his head, disappointed with himself. Specimen, Project, Savior of Mankind or not, right now, the baby was only that – a baby. He needed food and warmth and care and . . .love. Gast supposed there hadn't been much of that lately, if ever. A tiny frown marred the child's delicate brow as he drew the doctor's finger closer to his mouth. 

"No, no, no," Gast pulled away. "Not in your mouth. My hands are all germy." The baby gurgled. "I guess you must be hungry too. As soon as we get your diaper changed we'll head up to the kitchen, okay?" He smiled at the child. The baby smiled as best it could in response. Gast felt the weight leave his shoulders instantly at the sight of that toothless baby grin. He laughed a little and the baby laughed with him. 

The scientist caught sight of some rough thread on the baby's cloth diaper. It was the name, stitched in love, if not with skill. Lucrecia's gifts had run more to academic pursuits than the simple crafts of the hearth. With his free hand he pulled enough of the cloth free to read the little monogram. "Seph . . . Sephire . . .Oh, darn," Gast fumbled around it.  He knew that Lucrecia and Hojo had picked the name for some symbolism, supposedly relevant to the project, but he himself had never been able to pronounce it properly and after the first few failed attempts, he had not tried.

That was no good. This was a child, a marvelous product of science, but a baby nonetheless. And children had names. Gast scratched his head. It would be ridiculous to keep calling the child 'Specimen One' as he got older anyway. "Seph-eeeeeee-roth…Sephi-roth…Sephiroth!" The man grinned, pleased with himself. "Sephiroth! Sephiroth! Sephiroth!" Little Sephiroth smiled again and gurgled happily. He let go of Gast's finger and began to clap. 

"Ah, that's a smart boy! He knows how to clap!" Gast reached in and picked the baby up. "Sephiroth is a smart boy!" He grinned again and hugged the baby close, excited by the discovery and warmed by the little one's response. He did not even notice that he had grown used to the smell of a soiled diaper. 

The heavy door creaked open and a grumpy Hojo entered with a diaper bag slung over his shoulder. It was a pastel yellow affair with a printed pattern on dancing moogles, another of Lucrecia's motherly acquisitions, no doubt. The thing oozed maternal softness. No wonder Hojo looked angry. The thin man stopped in the doorway to stare at the sight of Gast dancing a waltz with the baby in his arms. 

"Gast, what the hell are you doing?" 

The man grinned. "I'm playing with him, obviously." Hojo made a sound of disgust as he came forward to drop the heavy diaper bag on the workbench. 

"That's hardly how to go about raising the savior of the human race," the man growled. Gast paid no mind.

"How would you know?" He asked lightly as he spun the gurgling baby around once more. "Ever raised a Messiah before?"

Hojo grumbled, vexed at having his authority over his own specimen usurped. "Hand him over. He needs changing." Gast rubbed noses with the little boy before he did. 

"Do you know how to change a diaper?" 

"No. Do you?" Hojo rooted around in the diaper bag for a clean, white linen, square. 

Gast scratched his head and looked down at the squirming child in the bassinet. "I've seen it done." 

The two began the laborious process of sorting through the items in the bag and figuring out what to do. Between the arguments about wet wipes and diaper pins, they forgot entirely about the baby.

Sephiroth didn't mind. He was uncomfortable but he did not really mind now. He had seen the familiar squares of white cloth that the men had pulled out and draped over the side of his bassinet. He knew the discomfort wouldn't last much longer. They were arguing over how to do the job properly right now. 

Neither of them suspected that he could already understand them, but whenever he tried to mimic their sounds, form their words, only baby's squawk would come out. Sephiroth had heard one of them say that it would be some time yet before infant vocal cords developed well enough to be capable of human speech. Sephiroth remembered this every time he tried to make them understand what he wanted, but he only became upset with his failure. 

Crying and screaming was all he had for now. The young one, Dane, responded quickly. That was his job, but he was gone now. He had told Sephiroth goodbye before he left. Sephiroth had not learned enough of loss and regret to feel either. Maybe the young man would come back. 

Sephiroth lay back quietly and watched the two men in white work above him. He had just decided that Gast was nice. Gast smiled with him. Gast played with him. Gast was not the one who gave him shots. Sephiroth did not like shots. They made his eyes hurt. They made his head hurt. He heard strange voices from people that he could not see. Hojo gave him all the shots. Hojo frowned at him and yelled at him to be quiet when all he wanted was to be dry, or fed, or held. 

And so, Sephiroth fought back any way he could. When Hojo told him to shut up, he cried harder. When Hojo came to give him shots, he fought hard. He could grab the syringe and hold it at bay for a long time before his hands lost their strength. Hojo often said that he was getting stronger. Sephiroth did not understand enough of time yet to hope to have the strength to hold the shot off forever one day. He only knew to fight each battle as it came.

"Alright, here goes," Hojo grumbled and reached to undo the dirty diaper. Sephiroth tensed up and then began to kick furiously "Oh hell, why does he have to give me such a hard time?" Hojo grumbled and he tried to get a hand on the diaper pins.

"Babies just do that, I've heard," Gast murmured as he looked on in interest. Hojo had grown quick himself from dealing with the rambunctious infant. He soon had the old diaper open and was ready to pull it out from under the child. Sephiroth was ready for him.

"Oh crap! He peed on me!" Hojo flew back and stared at the damp spot on his lab coat in disgust. 

Gast fell over laughing. "Yeah, babies do that too," he sputtered, and Sephiroth laughed along with him. 

**************************

**Time:** 3 hrs 45 mins

**Assessment:** Too long, but a start.

**Mission:** 16.67% complete.


	2. One Golden Day

One Golden Day

"Sephiroth! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Hojo snapped at the boy. "Get your hand out of there!" Both Sephiroth and the lab mice he was playing with jumped at the sound of the scientist's voice. Sephiroth spun around, wide-eyed, but as he did so, his elbow hit the poorly balanced lid of the tank and sent the metal grating crashing to the floor. The six-year old winced at the sound, then opened his eyes to see the mess it had made. There was a pretty big puddle where the attached water bottle had hit the tiles. The food pellets that had landed in it were already swelling to sogginess.

The child sat very still on the stool he had dragged over to reach the top of the lab bench but the look on his face soon turned to one of defiance. Hojo narrowed his eyes at the boy and continued the staring contest that had been waging since the child's birth. Sephiroth turned away first, but with such an air of precocious nonchalance that Hojo found no satisfaction in it. Honestly, the boy could be so aggravating.

"Boy, how many times do I have to tell you to leave the test subjects alone? They're not pets!" Hojo stalked over to pick up the lid and brushed past the silver-haired child. "What would happen if you got bitten?" he fumed as he slapped the grate back into place. "Some of them are carrying diseases and you don't know what you might contract if something happened!"

"Yes, I do," Sephiroth countered, looking up through his wispy bangs. "The label on the tank says you haven't done anything to these yet."

Hojo's peered through his glasses at the boy. Sephiroth had learned to read very early on. At first Hojo was pleased with the evidence of the specimen's superior intellect, but sometimes he wondered if it was just more of a problem. "That doesn't matter. They can still bite."

Sephiroth eased himself off the stool, falling the last few inches to the ground. "They won't bite me," he said quietly as he began to push the heavy thing back into place. "They like me." When he judged that he had gotten a far enough distance, he turned back to face the tall man. "It's not my fault they can't stand you."

Hojo would have spluttered if he was the type to do so. Sephiroth could already read the tell-tale signs of rage. The scientist was rigid. His lips were pressed thin as if he sealed a slew of screams behind them. Sephiroth braced himself.

"Go to your room, Sephiroth! I'll come and get you when its time for the next round of treatments." Hojo stood still. Obviously he was not going to budge until Sephiroth did as he was told. The child knew it could have been worse. It was a small, sad victory that it was not, but Sephiroth was satisfied with it. He turned and left the laboratory to walk down the narrow, artificially lit corridor that led to the hole in the wall called his room. 

Hojo watched the exit for quite while after the child went through it. That boy was becoming too much to handle. He was too energetic to be allowed to roam the labs any longer. It was a good thing certain arrangements had been made. Soon, the child's burgeoning energies would be put to proper use and the next phase of the experiment would begin. Hojo nodded to himself, picked up the sealed tank with its furry white occupants. 

In the split second between hearing the splashing sound from beneath his shoes and feeling the floor slide out from under him, he made a mental note to call a janitor in to clean up the puddle. 

__________________________

Sephiroth sat on his narrow bed, leaned back against the cold, white wall and closed his eyes. There was no point in keeping them open. His room was little more than a box, four white walls, just far apart enough to hold the bed and the old file cabinet that served to store his clothes. The fluorescent lighting above was always too bright and was never turned off. There was no switch inside the room. The only ways in and out of the room were the door (and the keypad would let him in, but not out) and the air vent near the ceiling. 

Sephiroth smiled. Hojo never came in here. The scientist always sent one of the assistants to get him. Gast occasionally came in, but the place was too cramped for an adult to stay long. The boy swung off the bed and went to the lowest drawer of the file cabinet. He had time, he knew. The next round of treatment was not for an hour or two yet. 

The draw opened with a squeak. Inside were small white t-shirts and shorts, the only type of clothing Sephiroth had ever been given. He reached in and rooted around under the neat piles. His fingers closed around his prize. 

It was a book, the only one that was truly his own. Gast had gotten it for him one day, simply because Sephiroth wanted something more than reagent labels and scientific journals to read. Hojo had also been angry that somebody kept pulling out his journals and leaving them all around the lab, putting them back out of order if they did at all. 

Sephiroth liked his book much more than the journals. True, the journals were about any and everything at all and his book was only about plants, but his book had pictures, nice pictures. He could read the words just fine, had read them so often that he could recite the entire thing cover to cover and hardly bothered with them anymore, but the pictures were the true prize. Sephiroth went back to his bed to enjoy the sight. 

He liked the lightly colored illustrations but it was the photographs that drew him in. He turned to the colored plates and touched an image. This place, this place was not just on white paper. It was real and it was outside the lab. The plant in the photo was a short one, with gnarled branches and thick leaves. The caption declared that the photo had been taken near someplace named Cosmo Canyon. Sephiroth liked the way that sounded. He closed his eyes and leaned back to imagine what it might look like. 

Perhaps what he saw in the photograph was all and Cosmo Canyon was like a great field of rock with stumpy desert plants bearing large white flowers. Perhaps it was a towering city in its own right, a palace carved from stone. 

Perhaps time was slipping away and he would be taken for his daily treatments soon. Sephiroth looked at the door. He could hear footsteps out in the corridor. People hardly ever came down that way if it was not to take him outside to the lab. The boy jumped off the bed and hurriedly returned his prize to its hiding place.

A mere second after he shut the draw, the door slid open. Sephiroth tensed, but instantly relaxed when he saw that it was Professor Gast. Sephiroth ran over to the man to hug him around the knees. Gast was nearly bowled over by the small child. He laughed as he reached out to press one hand on the wall.

"Easy now, Sephiroth," he said, laughing. "You'll throw us both down." He patted the child's snowy head and tossed the empty duffel bag that he had brought onto the bed. Sephiroth looked up but did not let go. 

"You didn't come to see me for two whole days," he said, sounding just a bit disappointed. 

Gast regarded the boy. "I had to see about arranging something, Sephiroth. Something just for you, in fact." The curiosity was evident on the boy's face, even behind the chin length bangs. It really was time for a haircut. 

Sephiroth turned around and looked at the bag that Gast had tossed onto the bed. "What's that for?"

"Pack your things, Sephiroth. You're getting a new room."

"Oh." A small hope died before it could rise. Sephiroth went to his little file cabinet and did as he was told. He packed his book in at the very bottom of the bag, unable to bear thinking about the pictures. Maybe, just maybe, the new part of the laboratory would look at least a little bit different. 

"Ready?" Gast was still smiling. Sephiroth nodded. The scientist took his hand and led him out of the little, white hole in the wall.

__________________________

"This is my new room?" Sephiroth was astounded. Who would have thought that such a place lay just a short walk from the cold white laboratory? He stepped inside. The duffel back slid off his  shoulder and hit the floor. 

The place was huge. The white walls seemed so far apart. The tile did not seem so cold. The bed looked just as much as the last one had, but there was an actual chest of drawers in one corner and a child-sized desk and chair in another. What was really amazing though, was the window. It was small and high, almost as near to the ceiling as the air vent was, but it was a window nonetheless. Sephiroth walked right towards it. He wanted to press his face against the glass and see outside, but the sill was above his head. He frowned, then looked at the doctor. 

Gast laughed. "Don't worry. You'll grow. Don't you want to take a look at the rest of the place?" Sephiroth wandered over to the desk and stared at the thing as if he were afraid to touch it and claim it for his own. 

"What's this for?" He put one small hand on the back of the chair.

Gast grinned at him. "That's the best part, Sephiroth. You're going to school tomorrow. You'll need that to do your homework." The boy's glowing eyes widened with surprise.

"I'm going to school?" he asked in disbelief. 

"Well, in a manner of speaking." Gast scratched his head. "It won't be a school like what other children go to." Sephiroth blinked. He had never met another child. "You'll have a series of one-on-one tutoring sessions," Gast continued. "The tutors the Presid – I mean, that we hired are all experts in their fields. You'll be learning from the best."

Sephiroth's hand fell from the chair. He turned towards the window again and stood right where he was. He looked up and saw what seemed to be a dull grey sky. He felt his eyes sting. There was an emptiness inside that did not come from missing lunch. He bowed his head and hid his face behind his hair. A window he could not even see out of. How fitting. If not for the fact that Gast, Hojo and the assorted assistants and technicians clearly went somewhere else in the night, Sephiroth might have doubted that there was anything at all beyond the lab.

"Sephiroth? Don't you like it?"

The  boy turned and looked at the scientist from under his bangs. Gast looked so hopeful. Sephiroth kept his  head bowed so that the man could not see his face. He liked that his hair was long enough to hide behind. 

"Sephiroth?" Gast asked again.

"It's nice," Sephiroth replied quietly. Gast exhaled and a bright smile lit up his face. Sephiroth felt a little guilty about the lie. The man must have put a lot of effort into setting things up for him and the room was much nicer than his old one. So what if the window was just a pinhole. Sephiroth would be going to school in the morning. He smiled, for real this time. "Will I get books to read for school?"

"More than you'd want, I bet." The scientist came over to ruffle Sephiroth's hair. The boy bore it stoically. Only Gast could do that, nobody else. "You've got a tough schedule ahead of you. The assistants will wake you in the morning to take you to breakfast as usual, but then you have a session with your math teacher. It'll be a lot of work after that." Gast smiled at the little boy, who seemed not so young sometimes. "I know you'll do well."

Sephiroth smiled back and began to unpack his things. Gast pitched in willingly even though there was not much to do. They were almost done when Hojo appeared in the doorway, scowling. 

"Get settled in later, boy. It's time for your mako treatment."

__________________________

Awareness seeped back slowly to the small boy on the bed. He didn't know which made him feel worse, the pain and illness that usually came from the mako shots or the knowledge that the start of school did not mean the end of the treatments. He would continue to have one every evening, just as he had before. Sephiroth could not make himself move. 

Waiting for the shot was worse than actually getting it. Hojo always administered it himself and he took such a long time getting ready. He would hold the vial up and make sure that Sephiroth saw him fill the syringe with the pale green liquid. The needle itself hurt but the boy had long grown used to that pain. It was afterwards that the real problems started, the lightheadedness, the blindness, the searing fire in his veins.

Gast had been there to hold his hand today, but Sephiroth often wondered why the man never asked Hojo to stop, not once. Maybe he couldn't. There were others, Sephiroth had come to realize, people he had never seen, like this President person that nobody ever wanted to mention. _He_ seemed to be the one who wanted all this done. Sephiroth could not even imagine why. At this time of day, all he knew was pain. 

He opened his eyes. The light was not too bright. The bulb was in fact off. That was another amazing thing about this room. He could control his own light switch. Or he would be able to as soon as he could reach it. Sephiroth vaguely remembered Gast lifting him off the examination table. The nice doctor must have flipped the switch. It was just the kind of thing the man would do. A small mercy.

The only light in the room came from the little window. Despite the pain and weakness in his body, Sephiroth fought to sit up when he saw the square beam of light. It was strong and such a bright yellow that it seemed gold. Specks of dust danced within it and became golden sparks, bright with their small portion of the sun's borrowed glory. Sephiroth grabbed the metal railing headboard for support and pulled himself up. 

The light was a beautiful, pure color, like the light on the trees in his book. It had to be real sunlight. Before he realized what he was doing, Sephiroth had swung his feet off the side of the bed. He was shaky when he stood but that did not matter. There was real sunlight in his new room and that meant that the window did indeed face the outside. 

He stood in the path of the light and let it hit him full in the face. It was bright, not quite blinding, but warm. Sephiroth closed his eyes and smiled. So this was what sunlight felt like. He wondered briefly if the plant in Cosmo Canyon felt the same when the sun shone on it. He hoped it did.

The light dimmed a bit and Sephiroth grew alarmed. The square of light was moving slowly. He had to find some way to get closer to the window so he could keep it for as long as possible. He looked around quickly. He hobbled over to the desk and began to pull it closer to the dresser. Even for his young body it would have been an easy task if not for the lingering weakness. He had to stop twice to let the dizziness pass. 

Finally, he heard the sharp thump of wood hitting wood and knew that he had his furniture where he wanted it. He jumped up onto the desk and scrambled onto the dresser. It was shaky, but he stood on it anyway. It put him just on eye level with his little window. The tiny patch of sky that he could see glowed a beautiful deep golden color that no artificial light could imitate. Suddenly it did not matter how small the window was or how high up. He had a piece of sky and it was enough just to know it. He thought his heart would burst out of his chest from beating so hard.

He reached out to touch the glass, though he felt the dresser wobble beneath him and he was more than a little dizzy. He misjudged the distance and leaned too far. He did not have the strength to cry out as he fell but he caught a glimpse of soft yellow cloud through the window as he did. In the split second before he hit his head on the desk on the way down, he was happy.

__________________________

"Of all the stupid things to do, boy, you had to get me woken up for something like this." Hojo kept grumbling as he cleaned the cut on Sephiroth's head. "Pass the bandaid." Gast did, smiling. Sephiroth was officially his project but Hojo was adamant about carrying out most procedures on the boy himself, and that included emergencies like this. Gast let him. Sephiroth was the man's son, after all, even if they had decided it was best not to let the boy know for the moment.

The brown-haired doctor was curious though. "Sephiroth, what exactly were you trying to do when you fell.?" The child had a very blank expression on his face, as if he were in a completely different place. Gast wondered if the boy had even heard the question. He was just about to repeat it when Sephiroth answered.

"I was trying to see out of the window," he said in his quiet child's voice. "I was still dizzy from the shot." 

"Oh," Gast said, and nodded as if he understood completely. Hojo just kept grumbling about lost sleep and puddles. He finished the job up quickly and walked out of the lab, muttering to himself all the while. "Hm," Gast nudged the sullen child. "He's nutty, eh? Didn't even say 'Goodnight'." Sephiroth said nothing. Once Gast was sure that the other scientist was out of hearing range, he reached into his pocket and drew out a lollipop. "Here you go. Just promise me you'll brush your teeth afterwards, okay?" 

Sephiroth smiled weakly. The bandaid was half-hidden by soft, silver hair. "Okay."

"Come on," Gast took the boy's hand. "You should get some sleep. You still have lessons in the morning."

__________________________

Sephiroth lay very still in his dark room and decided finally that he liked the place very much. Gast had moved the desk back into place for him. They had finally finished unpacking. Sephiroth's book lay on the little desk, opened to the page with the photograph of the twisted desert plant. The doctor had stayed for a while to make sure that the boy was alright, but Sephiroth had already retreated into himself. Gast had hugged him goodnight and turned off the light. The man had stood in the doorway for a while, looking at the little window.

"Look, Sephiroth," he had said before he left. "There's a star!" 

And so Sephiroth had seen his first real star. It was nice, he thought, just like in the pictures, but nothing like the bright yellow sun. A little smile graced the silver cherub's face as he slipped into dreams of walking into golden light.

**************************

**Time: **4hrs 

**Assessment:** Adequate 

**Mission:** 33.33% complete


	3. Not Easy Being Green

Not Easy Being Green 

"NO!" A metal tray flew across the laboratory and hit the stark, white wall with a clang. Sharp instruments skittered across the floor. The thin boy struggled to sit up on the examination table. He was in pain, the laboratory assistants could see it written plainly on his face, but he succeeded. The glare he shot them was furious. The green glow in his eyes had only intensified with the last round of treatment. 

"No more," the boy grated out the words. "No more!" The break in his voice made it no less terrifying. 

The door swung open and Hojo entered with a clipboard and a scowl. "Sephiroth, don't be an ass. Your treatment isn't done yet."

The boy's legs nearly fell out from under him when he tried to stand. His feet had turned to rubber. He gripped the thin mattress for support. Long silver hair spilled over his shoulder and he had to push it back to meet the scientist's gaze. "It's never finished, is it?" His voice broke again halfway through. "You're going to keep me here, you're going to keep sticking me and pumping me full of mako and writing down what happens till the day I die." His foot slipped and he slid to the floor. 

Hojo motioned to one of the assistants to move in. All Sephiroth saw was a blur of white as the man picked him up and put him back on the table. "Strap him down properly this time," he heard Hojo say. The bright light above was nearly blinding. Sephiroth felt the tightening leather around his wrists and ankles. His breathing grew heavy. He knew what was coming, knew perfectly well. Knowing did not make it easier.

He felt the needle go in and then the burning began, liquid fire in his veins. The light grew impossibly bright, tinted with green, and the voices began to fade. The boy let himself slide away as far as he could go. Maybe, maybe if he could get far enough, his body would not burn so much. The voices became soft echoes and the lights were not so brilliant, but he could go no further. His body caged him in this state as much as the walls of the laboratory did. He could not move and did not wish to. It hurt too much.

"I'm sorry, sir," Sephiroth heard a woman's voice from outside the shell that was his body. The female lab assistant . . .funny how she never bothered to speak to Sephiroth himself. "The restraints weren't on properly and when the tremors began his arm got loose."

"Hm," Hojo was not pleased. "One more mistake like that and you won't be around to make another one." Sephiroth heard footsteps and then the door slammed shut. Two shadows appeared over him, the man and the woman. 

"This is terrible! I don't want to be fired!" The woman was distressed, but Sephiroth had no pity to spare for anyone. He was in agony and she was worried about losing her job? If he could have controlled his body at the moment he would have smirked at her. The last assistant had lost more than a job. One of the scalpels had gotten the man in the neck. Sephiroth had never seen him again, not that he cared. He had simply noted the fact and gone about observing and cataloging the replacement's nuances.

"Don't worry about it," the man said. "The kid's getting stronger by the day. They can't really blame you if the equipment they give you isn't up to dealing with him. Get the last needle ready." It would be a thick one, full of shimmering green mako. Bits and pieces of conversation floated down to the immobile boy.

"Where do you suppose they found this kid, anyway?"

"Heh, I dunno. I supposed somebody screwed a dragon and he popped out!" Laughter. . . Sephiroth would have shivered if he could  have.

"They've put so much mako into his system in the past couple of years, it's a wonder he doesn't bleed the stuff!"

"I'm surprised he hasn't gotten sick from it all!"

A chuckle. "Ah, he's used to it. Been here from birth, you know." The voices faded, as did the lights. Sephiroth was left trapped within his gangly, adolescent body. He let himself drift. There was nothing else he could do until the mako illness wore off. 

Then it would be time for the testing. They would make him lift weights, run on treadmills, they would check his heart rate and his brainwaves. They would take blood out for the mako they had put in. Maybe they really did want to replace his blood with mako. 

Sephiroth felt a sudden chill come over his body. He knew what that meant. His mind was about to spiral out of control and he feared it. There was a darkness, a sensation of utter blindness, and Sephiroth was cast adrift. Impressions came at him from all around. He could not tell if they were images or sounds, touches or even smells. It was disorienting. Fragments came together  and flew apart just as quickly. 

From deep within, almost inside him, one thing rang out quietly, but it was clearly a voice. _"Like this. Like this."_  

Sephiroth felt as if something actually grabbed his mind and turned it. Then he knew. He suddenly knew how to pull the images together, how to orient himself in the void. He sorted through the intruding images and pulled the pieces together. He could tell which ones fit together now, where they came from. Whole pictures formed. He examined and discarded them at will. 

_The lab assistants were flirting with each other over coffee in another room . . . a woman with long brown hair pounded on a heavy door and cried . . .in a far-off corridor, a janitor wrung out his mop and kept working as people passed by. . . a large, bearded man in a military uniform signed a report . . . a little girl with blank, green eyes sat on a cold table and shivered . . .Hojo stood before a long conference desk and reported to the President . . _.

Sephiroth held on to the last image. His grip was tenuous but he could feel that the matter concerned him. 

_"The years of waiting have paid off, somewhat, sir," Hojo was saying. "I believe the boy is physically ready for the next step."_

_"Good. It's not a moment too soon. The arrangements have all been made. I expect that his training will be accelerated, since he already has more mako in him than any SOLDIER." The President grinned._

_"So Heidegger assures me. The boy's treatments will continue during his training." Hojo was expressionless. "Not with the same frequency, but his mako tolerance is high enough for him to handle doses that would kill a normal man outright." The President grunted his approval. "Heidegger is currently ensuring that the boy's schedule leaves enough time for him to report to the lab for further testing," Hojo continued._

 Sephiroth's focus slipped. The image wavered.

_"Further testing? What for?" _

_Hojo paused before he answered. "The specimen's mental abilities still lag behind the projections for this stage of the project. Even the younger specimen of the Promised Land project shows more psychic aptitude that Specimen One."_

_The President got up and walked over to the large window that overlooked the city. "Does that have to be a problem, Doctor? The boy can still fight. We'd already determined that he wouldn't be the one to lead us to the Promised Land."_

_"Nevertheless, Mr. President, I must insist on monitoring the situation. There is the possibility that the boy is simply a 'late-bloomer', to put it in layman's terms."_

_The President guffawed. "Have it your way, Hojo! It can't hurt to keep an eye on the boy!"_

Sephiroth lost his hold completely and the image flew away. His body did not seem so hostile and immobile now. The cold had not subsided and he still shivered on the table. Nobody ever thought to cover him. He lay still -what choice did he have- and let the scene play in his mind again. He had not known that there were other specimens like him, had not known what had been planned for his life. He wondered who this 'Heidegger' person was and just what 'training would be waiting for him. 

He had already learned all his tutors could teach him. His physical training had been carefully supervised and he had been taught the basics of self-defense. He wanted to learn more about everything, but most of all, he wanted to get away from this place. He had heard Hojo's plans, assuming that what he had seen was true, not the product of a mako-poisoned imagination. More treatments, more testing. No matter what this new training was, it was no permanent escape from Hojo's grasp. Sephiroth had learned long ago, there was no escape for him.

He smiled weakly. At least he would be away from Hojo for longer stretches. And he was just about due for another of what Hojo called 'Childish, Unscientific Acts of Destruction.' War was war and Sephiroth fought however he could. If he could not stop Hojo from working, he would destroy the means by which Hojo did his work. He grinned, which caused the assistants no small alarm when they came to release him. They always let him wander down the hall to his room on his own since he was more than old enough to find his way. 

Sephiroth took a detour instead and walked to the one place he was expressly forbidden to be without supervision. He went to the main laboratory and stared at the blinking machines and sparkling glassware. He was still dizzy, but there was a wicked thrill running through him. He pondered exactly how to give this particular 'tantrum' a signature trait, a name that would forever etch it into the bony old man's wriggling brain. 

Sephiroth sat on a stool and smiled at thoughts of glories past. He had contaminated the chemicals before and unplugged the freezers, left incubators wide open and built fine forts out of the man's precious journals. He had already shattered all the glassware, had even slipped fine shards into the coffee pot. Sephiroth had thrown so many things into that coffee pot over the years, acid and mouse-droppings, dead roaches and flies, hell, he'd even urinated in it once or twice... Too bad Hojo had not died. The man never even called in sick. 

The last time, he had turned on all the gas and used a striker. The spectacular fireball had almost outdone the look of rage on Hojo's face. The old bag of bones could not decide whether to be angry or not. His lab had been destroyed, the whole building had almost gone up in flames, and the boy had walked out with barely a singe. Stark naked, since his clothes had burned right off his back, but unharmed. 

Here lay the difficulty. How could Sephiroth possibly outdo that one? If he truly was getting out of the lab, it was time for a grand finale. He leaned on one elbow and nearly dozed off thinking. He did not know how long it would be before he was sent off for _training._ It would be soon, he supposed, and Hojo would lose his favorite specimen. Sephiroth sat up. If he was getting out, why should the others have to stay?

He got up, nearly tripped over his own feet, and ran full speed for the animal room. He was nearly breathless by the time he reached the door. He knew the code for the door, had stolen it out of some forgetful lab assistant's pocket years ago. The door swung opened with a click. Sephiroth blocked it from swinging shut with one foot while he dragged a heavy wastepaper basket into place to do the job. 

He entered the room. It was long, white, like all the others on this floor, and lined all around with steel shelves, packed tight with shelves and cages that stretched far into the distance. Sephiroth leaped forward and began to pull up the lids. He broke locks and cracked tanks. Everything, baby mice, hoary rats, thin snakes, snails, cats, birds, turtles, bunny rabbits, all forgot their natural adversaries in a hurry to escape out the door. Sephiroth made short work of the large room and his pulse raced the whole time. Hojo was just going to shit his pants when he saw this!

The job was done all too soon, though Sephiroth had not been able do anything about the live sharks. He ran down the hallway to his room, tingling all over with the excitement. What if he ran into someone? What if he ran into Hojo? He heard voices up ahead and his heart nearly flew right out of his chest. He ducked into a corridor and hid behind a wall. He hoped his breathing wasn't too loud. 

The footsteps and voices came closer and passed. Sephiroth was thankful that it had been the assistants and not Hojo himself, but still, it would not do to be caught in this part of the lab. He looked down the narrow corridor. It looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps he had once had a room here. The boy carefully peered around the corner. There was no one in sight. If he wanted to explore, there was no time like the present. He faced the corridor again and began to walk, trusting in his sense of direction to lead him back to the main lab.

There was not much to see. The walls were pale and the doors were steel. There was a keypad on each lock. The paint had worn off the numbers of a few and Sephiroth could easily guess what the combinations might be. The only thing out of place was the complete lack of sound.

No, not complete. There was something like crying off to the side from one of the rooms. Sephiroth stopped in front of it and pressed his ear to the door. As soon as he did so, the sound stopped. He listened hard, but there was nothing. His exhaustion from the day's procedure caught up with him and he almost fell asleep right there. Instead, his mind slipped down as it had before.

The descent was more controlled this time. Was this what Hojo had been hoping Sephiroth would learn to do? The boy resolved to hide it from the man as long as possible. Images and sounds began to flit through Sephiroth's mind once more. 

Hojo got into an elevator . . .A trooper ran down a hallway with an important message… A small, blond boy in a suit threw a paper plane at his teacher's head…The long-haired woman with tears in her eyes held the little girl close in her arms and motioned for her to be silent…the President lit a cigar as he surveyed his empire…Down the hallway and around the corridor, the lab assistants held hands and snuck away from their desks. 

Sephiroth returned to himself. That last image had been a bit much. If it was not his imagination, then those idiots were running off for a make-out session. But they had left their computers on and unguarded. The boy grinned. Let the lackeys hump in a closet. Hojo would have their heads afterwards. He fled down the corridor past the labs and offices. He knew the maze quite well. Every now and then an escaped animal crossed his path. He knew that they might never make it out of the building, but at least they might be free from Hojo's plans for a while. The mako exposure hurt him badly enough. How much torture it was for a smaller creature, he could not guess. 

Sephiroth soon reached the tiny office he had sought and sure enough, as he had seen it was empty. There was one computer and it was on. Sephiroth had never been allowed to use one unsupervised, and then, only for studies. Still, he knew his way around the things. He fiddled with the mouse and helped himself to a donut from the box on the table. He'd missed sweet things since Gast's passing. 

Areas of the network that he had never been allowed to see were clearly laid out on this machine. Hojo was going to crucify those fools for logging into the system and leaving it for anyone to access. Anyone like Sephiroth, Agent of Destruction. The boy grinned and got to work.

Environmental controls, access locks, the settings were all there. Changing them was almost effortless. Wait till Hojo tried to get into the bathroom tomorrow. How long could that dried up old stick hold it? Sephiroth knew he would have to hurry. Hojo would be getting off the elevator right at that very moment. Just a few more things, change a few more settings, pop a few more locks. 

Sephiroth heard a series of sharp clicks from far away. The locks in that direction had all sprung open at once. The boy grinned and bit into another donut in satisfaction. There was little time for it. He got up and ran. He had to be in his room, studying or at least pretending to, by the time Hojo got back. 

__________________________

Hojo did not come to collect him for testing that day. Sephiroth had begun to wonder if the old man would come at all. A long wait usually meant that there was a problem or that Hojo was angry. After the little stunt with the lab animals, Sephiroth supposed it would be both. 

There had been a lot of yelling after Sephiroth locked himself up in his room. There had been screams amidst the angry shouting and something that Sephiroth had even thought might have been gunshots. The commotion had grown distant and the lab had been very silent after that. Maybe they had resorted to hunting down the escaped specimens. Sephiroth had not considered that possibility before he freed them, but it did not matter. In this place, death would be a blessing.

When Hojo did come in, he seemed tired. Sephiroth had never seen the man look that way before. The two stared each other down. For the first time ever, Hojo looked away first. Sephiroth was ecstatic, but he was careful not to let his mouth twitch. He  hoped his mako green eyes did not glow with his joy. He knew their intensity shifted with his mood and he hated it. He had grown his hair just past his shoulders specifically so he could hide behind it and now his eyes were proclaiming his emotion for all to see. 

Hojo spoke. "You've caused a lot of damage today, boy." Sephiroth said nothing. "All my specimens, gone, my experiments ruined, including," the man's voice grew sharp, but weak, "Including one that can never be repaired." Sephiroth maintained his silence. "There's been a project, boy, one as big as yours, and today, you ruined it completely. One of the specimens was killed and the other, well, it's gone now, probably for good." 

The man rubbed his temples in frustration. "It won't survive long out there on its own. Now our only chance to get the information we need is by dissecting the dead specimen. That's barely anything at all compared to what we had hoped to learn." If Hojo had ever shown one ounce of mercy towards Sephiroth, if the boy did not know what it meant to be Specimen One, then Sephiroth might have felt some slight remorse for his actions. There was no guilt in the boy's heart and no pity for the gaunt monster in the doorway. Hojo's head snapped up as if he could sense the boy's feelings.

"You will not be doing this again, Sephiroth," he said. "Start packing your things, if you care to. Next week you'll be joining the army. Maybe the military can straighten you out." The door slammed shut. Sephiroth was left in a darkness broken only by the green glow of his own eyes. He smiled.

**************************

**Time:** 3hrs 12mins

**Assessment:** Events feel a bit disjointed, emotional transitions might not flow smoothly. Props to Henson and his frog for the title. 

**Mission:** 50% complete


	4. Deep Dark Blues

**Warning:** Some m/m content. 

Deep Dark Blues 

He clutched a crumpled sheet of paper in one hand and stood stone still by the large window while others rushed past in excitement. They ran and chatted with each other. Some stopped to lend a hand with luggage. Groups formed and split. Some made plans to meet later, but always in hushed tones as they neared his place by the window. He was aware of their movement behind him, but it was not his concern. They did not matter to him. He did not matter to them.

They were going home. It was the last day of classes for those in elite training. Most of the classes were over and the cadets, his classmates, were going home. Sephiroth kept his gaze out the window and watched them leave. They seemed barely bigger than beetles from where he stood. He could just hear the sounds of their voices. If he concentrated he could hear the words, but it was all mindless chatter, not worth the effort. It was enough to watch, a small satisfaction. He had never quite grown used to the crowds or the lack of privacy in the Academy. They would all leave and soon he would have the whole place to himself. For a little while, any way.

Salute, sign out, salute again, run out the gate, go far from the base to enjoy the short freedom. Sephiroth watched the grey-uniformed cadets. They were all smiling, grinning, laughing as they went. One pair of young men high-fived each other. Sephiroth did not understand the point of it. He did not understand the point of most of the things his classmates did or said, though he had hoped to and early on, had tried so hard.

But he was different, after all. The few short years he had spent in this training had shown him as much. He was faster, stronger, smarter than all the rest and the instructors treated him accordingly. He was pushed harder than the others. His training schedule was brutal. He had already been on more missions than any of the rest, led by the officers he was supposed to one day surpass. That day was fast approaching. He pressed his forehead against the glass, but held in any other sign of how he felt. His reputation depended on it.

Those cadets out there, they knew it, they knew he was the best. He knew that they whispered about it in the hall. He had seen the looks they exchanged in lectures whenever he volunteered to answer. When he had a scheduled training match, the crowd that materialized on the fringes was almost as thick as it would be for a full demonstration between the elite SOLDIERs. They were awed, amazed and afraid. His ability set him apart as surely as did the premature glow in his eyes.

No, that was a lie. His appearance had drawn some stares when he had first been sent here and his unusual talent for the arts of combat had drawn even more attention, but they were not the barriers he set them up to be. Sephiroth closed his eyes against the sight of the deepening blue sky and forced the uncomfortable thoughts down. It did not matter. He clutched the stark white page tighter and felt it tear slightly under the force of his fingernails. When he looked up again, the traffic behind him had dwindled to a few scattered stragglers. 

Most were outside now and though the light was fading, he could still make out the faces.

He recognized the Ludds, a pair of lanky blonds, twins, sixteen years old, grey eyes, from his Advanced Tactics class. An old man, ashen-haired, waited patiently beyond the gate. The father, Sephiroth guessed, from the resemblance. So the twins were going home for the little break, to be with family. That must be nice…

Matthews - age fifteen, height five feet, six inches, brown hair, a little clumsy - was grinning at one group over his shoulder as he walked towards the gates. Matthews had a girlfriend. He talked about her all the time and had her picture stuck inside his locker, right next to his socks. Day in, day out, all anyone in the cadet quarters heard from Matthews was how much he was missing his girl. No doubt he was off to go meet her. Sephiroth snorted. He had better things to do with his time that sit down writing to some girl. Not that it was likely that he would ever have a girl to write to. His hand tightened around the page he held. 

A large group swarmed the gate together and Sephiroth could hear their loud whooping without even trying. He recognized one of the dark haired young men, Vantley, nineteen, red hair, blue eyes, loud, boisterous, disruptive. Sephiroth listed off what he had observed of the boy in his head. He did not care much for loud people, though the others did not seem to mind. Quite the opposite actually. Vantley had many, many friends. 

Sephiroth turned away from the window to lean against the wall. There was no point to watching the others leave. He was in here, not out there. His training was his life and he could not, would not leave it. The military had indeed straightened Sephiroth out. His superiors made his life hell, that much had not changed. He could not wreak havoc on an entire base the way he did in the laboratory. He had no wish to. It was enough to be the best here and leave the rest in the dust. It was more purpose in life than he had ever had before. Leaving the military would put him right back in Hojo's hands. 

Enough time had passed that he no longer shuddered at the thought of the place. He was still called back for more violent testing, but now that he had been outside, it was easy to send his mind away while the scientists abused his body. Let the other cadets wonder why he spent so much time walking out under the stars after hours. They took the outdoors for granted and he was too ashamed to confess why he did not. 

There was noise in the hallway, approaching chatter. Sephiroth pulled himself up straight and folded his arms. The page he held crinkled in his grip. As he expected, the students grew quieter as they passed him. He watched them through his eyelashes, drawn to their behavior, yet unwilling to attract any more attention. He was not sure why.

He almost resembled one of the marble busts that lined the hall, pale, rigid, cold, but it was not enough for him to escape the wary gaze of his classmates. They slowed as they neared him. His heart began to pound. Some of them were thinking about speaking to him. He could read it in their posture, the slight pause, the glances that lasted a second too long, the breath drawn and held, the words, trapped in the throat. Sephiroth felt his own breath catch. If they spoke to him, what would they say? How would he respond?

Sephiroth faced most of his problems head on. He opened his eyes fully and stared right at the group. The entire group, about a half dozen of his classmates, room mates, acquaintances stopped in the near darkness, frozen in the eerie light of his stare. The silver-haired young man instinctively identified the nervous faces. The attached facts and statistics surfaced in a blink. Funny how that reaction had become reflex. The silence stretched out to an uncomfortable pause. 

Sephiroth broke the silence with a soft acknowledgement of the group's stares. "Yes?" He immediately winced inside. It had come out sharper than he intended. One of the younger ones, a dark-haired boy named Winters, actually cringed at it. 

It was Sands, an eighteen year-old with hair to match his name, who gathered the nerve to answer under the piercing green spotlights. "We, I mean all of us here, we're going to hit some of the clubs in the city before we split up for the break." It sounded as if he meant to say more, but the words seemed to be trapped in his throat. 

Sephiroth waited fearfully, hopefully, for the rest, but nothing came. Nothing would ever come. The tension slid away and took the hope with it. Things like this, they were not for him. He knew his lot in life. "Enjoy yourselves," he said quietly, pleased only that he had kept his voice steady. He turned his back on the group and stared out at the dark blue sky. It was hard to see the stars with all the security lights in the yard. A slow moment passed and Sephiroth felt the young men behind him exhale with relief. They fidgeted and began to move. 

"Hey, uh," Sands said weakly, "enjoy the break." Sephiroth nodded in acknowledgement, though he did not turn. Footsteps disappeared around the corner and soon he was alone in the hallway again. He thumped his forehead against the window and this time, he could not stop the look of pain from crossing his face. 

It was unfair, this existence. Some things had been easier in Hojo's laboratory. At least there he had not known how alone he truly was. Out here, he saw it every day. He had tried, honestly, to 'make friends', early on. It came so naturally to everyone else around him. Not him, though. He always did the wrong thing, or said the wrong thing, or did not truly understand what the conversation was about. Much of what was normal to the others had been completely unknown to him. 

He had not had a mother to bake him a birthday cake. Nobody had ever taken him fishing. He had not even seen a real tree till he was nine. The mice who had been his playmates had never cared what he said, or minded that all he talked about were his lessons. People were different, though, and it was better to say nothing at all than the wrong thing. They stared at him hard enough for his weird hair color. 

He straightened and swallowed his pain. It was useless. There was no sense in it. These things were just not for him, he told himself, over and over. He knew what he was there for and it was not for partying or dancing, or getting a girlfriend. He was there to learn and then to serve, not to be liked or _loved._ He let the page he held fall to the floor. 

There was chattering out in the nearly empty yard. Sands' group was finally making to the gate, talking and gesticulating animatedly, all the wild. Sephiroth felt his chest tighten. They were talking about him. It was a fair guess. Every now and then one of them would turn and look back at the building, eyes searching the darkened windows. Sephiroth turned away again. He did not see the way Winters lagged behind the group. He did not see the boy break off and run back towards the building. 

Sephiroth leaned against the wall for a few long minutes, pondering the turns his life had taken. Quick footfalls in the hallway drew him out of it. He opened his eyes just in time to see Winters enter. The boy paused a few feet away, like a terrified mouse. Sephiroth's mouth tilted very slightly at the thought. What a life it was, to be able to scare people with just a glance. He studied the slender boy and let the vital facts slide by. 

Alex Winters, fifteen, black hair, grey eyes, five feet, five inches, promising sharp shooter, adequate at academics, barely holding his own in unarmed combat. He was in most of Sephiroth's lower level classes, but sat far in the back, so the silver-haired young man hardly ever saw him. It was probably for the best, given the way the boy was twitching under the lifestream-colored glow that emanated from Sephiroth's eyes. Any more and Winters would melt. 

Sephiroth decided to put the boy out of his misery. "What do you want?" The sooner the matter was done, the sooner Alex Winters would leave. Like the others who had tried before him, though, Winters seemed to be choking on his words.

"Ah, um, I, uh, we were," he trailed off. Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at him and almost smiled. Good to know there were people more tongue-tied than he was. The dark-haired boy drew himself up, visibly gathering his nerve, though he seemed to be turning pink. "We were wondering if you would, um, like to come with us. To the club, I mean, you know, if you're interested." 

Sephiroth nearly fell down. They were actually asking him to come with them? To be in their company, with the music and the dancing and all the things normal people his age did, to walk with them and laugh, maybe sneak a few drinks, talk to a girl…

No, it could not be. Much as he wanted it, Sephiroth knew that it was not the time. Why now, of all the times for this blessing to strike, why now, when he knew there was no time and no hope? His face grew pained, despite Winters' presence. "I can't," Sephiroth said. "I'm sorry."

"Oh." A light went out of the boy's face and his eyes fell to the floor. He stepped closer to Sephiroth and knelt to the ground. He picked up the crumpled page before Sephiroth could stop him. "Did you drop this?" Sephiroth snatched it out of his hands. Grey eyes widened in shock. "I'm sorry," the boy hurried to apologize. "I didn't mean any harm." He stood up and stepped back, not completely out of Sephiroth's reach. "I know everybody doesn't like sharing letters from home."

"It's not a letter!" Sephiroth snapped before he could stop himself. Winters jumped but was too scared to move. Sephiroth glared at the younger cadet, though it was himself he was angry with, for showing emotion, for entertaining ridiculous dreams. He exhaled deeply. "It's not a letter," his voice was quiet now. Winters was staring at him. The boy's owl-eyed surprise softened to wary curiosity, but he said nothing. The taller cadet sighed. Give the boy what he wanted and maybe he would go away and Sephiroth could get on with his business.

"It's my new orders," Sephiroth lifted the page slightly. "I'm being transferred to Wutai. I leave the day after tomorrow." He could not understand why the other boy looked terrified.

"They're sending you to the war?"

Sephiroth nodded. He was going to war to join a platoon as a special operative. Never mind that he had not yet graduated from the Academy. He could earn his field commission for SOLDIER in no time out on the battlefield. If he survived. The thought seemed to cross Winters' mind at the same time, from the expression on his face. Sephiroth wondered why the boy was taking the news so hard. It was interesting watching him fidget though, and it did make him feel better to see someone else having a hard time with it. 

Winters lifted his head and looked Sephiroth straight in the eyes. His lips moved as he struggled to think of something appropriate to say. Sephiroth almost laughed at it. He was not the only one who could not say the right thing at the right time. He closed his eyes in relief and missed the moment when Winters sprung forward.

All Sephiroth felt at first was a pair of arms around his neck. There was a fraction of a second when he might have been able to throw the boy off, but he was caught off guard and the fierce lips that pressed against his own drove all thought out of his head. He fell back against the wall under the weight of the young cadet's body. His eyes flew open, but all he could see was the boy's black hair. 

It was over before Sephiroth could even think about taking action. Winters stood, breathless and red-faced. Sephiroth slid down against the wall, shocked beyond words.    "You come back safe, you hear me?" Winters said. "Come back alive!" Sephiroth nodded wordlessly, his control, his free will completely blown away. The dark-haired boy almost burst into tears at the sight. "Come back safe," he said once more and fled, leaving the silver-haired young man to recover his wits alone in the dark hallway.

**************************

**Time:** 4 hrs 23 mins

**Assessment:** Just damned weird. Tough time writing this one. Author is fighting some blues of her own. Apologies if that last scene was too disturbing. You were warned. 

**Mission:** 66.67% complete.


	5. Blood

**Warnings:** Rating increase for War atrocities. 

Blood 

The battle was long over but the rage was still hot inside him. Outside, the conquered city lay cold and still. Smoke still rose from the rubble of the city walls. The stench of blood and gore still filled the streets. Survivors, the walking wounded, crawled, hid, were found and rounded up for interrogation, for torture, for death, whatever awaited the defeated protectors of this once-proud nation. 

His heart soared with the dark memory. He had done this, he had ordered the siege, the storm of the beautiful walled city. He reveled in the thought. He saw again, the flash of his sword, the falling bodies, the blood, the dirt, the fear. He had led his men onwards and slashed a streak through the enemy ranks, a bold silver brushstroke against the city's yellows and greens. Mad artist, he splashed his own colors on the canvas, the red of spilled life, the black cloud of death and now, the pale grey gloom that rose from those who were left. Those colors, the pain that went with them, had been his too long. It was easy, in battle, to give the pain away, make it someone else's. He pushed his pain into someone else with every stroke of the sword. 

It had been difficult at first, as a raw boy, thrust into the rage of war. Theoretical studies, training on a practice mat, even the matches against deadly opponents designed specifically to test his ability, were nothing compared to the real thing. The sweat, the stench, the absolute despair that surrounded the camps, these were a far cry from his sterile upbringing. Near-constant fear, he had always known, but here, it had a quality of the unknown about it. Here, fear was injury and death, not needles and surgery. But pain, there was always that. He could barely remember his first battle. It had passed in a haze of terror and pain. He had survived, fractured and broken inside at horrors he could not and would not call to mind.  

It was easier after that. The situation was different from what he had known before, but he grew accustomed to it and learned to send his mind away. The enemy troops on the battle field were clad always in white armor, in his mind's eye, white, their own color of mourning and death. He did not know what the men he had come to command saw, perhaps no more than the fields of dark opposition and the fierce faces of the enemy. When the full heat of battle hit, Sephiroth no longer saw the hint of humanity beneath the helms. Amidst the white, each glinting eye became that of the monster who had plagued and tormented him all his life. And so, over and over, 'Hojo' died, and the little voice in the SOLDIER's head applauded his newfound thirst for blood while it buried the thought that, in seeking to slay his monster, he had become one himself. 

Afterwards, though, it all came back. The pain he had sought to give away could be no one's but his own. The broken bodies that decorated the gruesome fields were only men, men who had died bravely even if their faces were forever frozen in fear. Once the rage passed, he remembered. The monster would always be waiting for him. There would be no escape. He would always be watched and controlled.

He had come to depend on the dangerous rage that gripped him. Out here, on foreign, hostile soil, with troops who feared his brilliant eyes as much as they trusted his authority, the burning violence was all he had. Though it threatened to swallow him, he fed it however he could. There were many ways to cause pain during wartimes.  

The girl beneath him whimpered on the straw mat. The pale light that came through the room's one small window showed the pain on her face in sharp relief. She was a delicate thing, fragile, dark-haired and dark-eyed, like all the others. He never troubled with their names, could barely remember their faces. He only remembered the pain he gave them while his blood burned. Some fought him. Some submitted. Some bore all he did to them in near silence. Some screamed till their throats were sore. 

This one had given in quickly, perhaps subdued by the smoky cloud of defeat outside. She stared blankly off to the side, unwilling to look directly at him. To do so would be to acknowledge what he was doing to her. If not for her jagged, forced breathing, she might as well have been dead. He growled above her in frustration. His blood burned for a satisfaction that he would not find with this unresponsive body. He pulled himself away and reached for his clothes. He dressed quickly in the dim light, more by touch than by sight and headed for the door. He heard the girl crying softly on the floor as he left. He did not look back. 

Awareness seeped in slowly as his blood cooled. Clouds of heavy smoke curled in the still air. There was hardly any sign of life in the streets. A few regular troopers stood guard outside the more intact buildings. They snapped to attention as he passed. He strode forward with no care for where he stepped. His footsteps were sickening splashes on the crimson streets. Above the troopers' chatter and the male laughter from the buildings they guarded, there was a faint wail, the city's cry of despair. He thought of the broken girl he had left behind. There would be others like her, no doubt, who now wept throughout the captured city. So it was for the conquered. They gave way under the victorious, wept and picked up any pieces left afterwards. 

_'You are victorious!'_ the voice in his head whispered. 

_'I feel sick,'_ he told it and pushed it away.  He marched on, letting his ears guide him as he sought to get as far away from that collective wail of woe as he could. Bit by bit, step by step, the air cleared of smoke. The low cries hushed, replaced by wild laughter and oddly enough, music. Sephiroth looked around carefully. 

The buildings in this district were more ornate, more constructed for grace than shelter or protection than in most of the city. The streets here were not so red and the air not so foul. There was music, Wutaian music, from many of the upper rooms and Sephiroth heard raucous voices that he recognized as his own officers. The 'entertainment' district, he guessed. Often, such an area was spared the bloody brutality of battle, but what came afterwards was often the same as in any other conquered place. 

"Oi!" Someone called out. "Over here, Sir!" 

Sephiroth turned towards the voice. It was his First Officer, grinning like a madman as he leaned dangerously far over a balcony. The General sighed, too locked inside himself to care to deal with the bristle-haired man's exuberance. He kept walking but Zack was nothing if not persistent. 

"General! Come on up!" He hollered again and leaned so far out that for a moment Sephiroth almost thought the man would fall over. Even as obviously drunk as he was, though, the Zack had excellent balance. Sephiroth stifled another sigh. He stood there in the deserted crossroads for a while and considered his next move. The wind picked up and brought a fragment of the city's lament to him. He trembled as it passed. The noise of the teahouse beckoned, offered refuge. He went in.

Zack met him on the stairs and waved him upwards, chattering all the while. "I was wondering where you were, sir! We've been having such a great time up here! You should have come sooner. The girls are so nice!" Sephiroth stopped halfway up the stairs, utterly unwilling to go down that road again. He glared at his spiky-haired officer, as if the man were to blame for all of it. 

Zack seemed oblivious to the glare. "Now don't be like that." He reached out and grabbed Sephiroth's hand. "Honestly, Sir, for someone with your looks, you sure don't seem like you talk to a lot of women." He paused and looked back, curious. "Is there something you're not telling me?" 

Sephiroth glared again and yanked his hand away. He stormed past the man and up the stairs, straight into the upper room. All action paused as he stood in the doorway. There were a few officers seated on the floor in varying stages of drunkenness, being served by elaborately made-up geisha. All eyes, were turned in his direction, the glowing eyes of SOLDIERs and the soft, dark eyes of young Wutaian women. All were frozen under his stare.

Something prodded him lightly in the back. "Say 'hello', General," Zack skipped around him and into the room to take a cup of warm wine from one of the girls. "Don't make Mama Ayame mad." He indicated the regal woman at one end of the room with a nod of his head. Despite the title the dark-haired man had given her, she seemed only a few years older than the young girls. She met his gaze full-on with a cold clarity. She was measuring him, he could tell. He carefully schooled his expression to one of blank interest and walked in.

Following Zack's example, the other SOLDIERs resumed their games, the flirtation and the drinking. Perhaps it was more subdued because of their Commanding Officer's presence, but it continued nonetheless. The man himself hardly paid attention to the music, the drink or the laughter. It was enough to be somewhere that the cries of the broken ones could not reach him. 

The revulsion that he always felt after his war rage faded was creeping in, an insidious vine that caught his innards and twisted them, tangled in his brain and tormented his heart. He almost wished he could rip the organ out of his body, or peel his filthy, sinning skin away from his flesh. Instead he knelt very still in the Wutaian manner and kept his gaze on the straw mats before him. 

Elaborately embroidered crimson silk interrupted his view. The older geisha, Ayame, had come to kneel before him. The General lifted his gaze to study her. Beyond the extravagance of her kimono, she was plainly arrayed. She went without makeup and her hair was arranged simply. Her expression was calm, thoughtful. Her black eyes betrayed nothing. She wore serenity around her like a cool cloak. Sephiroth decided that she needed no other adornment. 

"Do you wish something of me?" His voice was quiet, meant for none but her to hear. 

"Forgive me if I seem presumptuous," she replied in near-flawless continental speech, though the General felt uneasy at her words. "Perhaps you would prefer more reserved entertainment than this." She indicated the rest of the room with a delicate gesture. 

Sephiroth looked around. Zack was trying to see how many teacups he could balance on his forehead and the apprentice geisha were gaily encouraging him. The General sighed. He turned back to Ayame and nodded. She rose with schooled grace and motioned for him to follow her out of the room. He tried to ignore the cheers and bawdy comments the men tossed his way as he left. 

The geisha led him down the narrow hallway to a room hidden behind thin paper screens. He paused outside when she stood aside to let him enter. On an impulse, he knelt to remove his boots. He could feel her eyes on the top of his pale head as he worked at the buckles. She almost seemed to approve. By the time he finished, she had lit a thick candle in the spare, elegant room.

It was not exactly furnished for entertainment. Sephiroth spotted several musical instruments, lovingly stored in one corner and a futon in another. An ink painting of Mt. Da Chao hung on the wall to his right. It must have been Ayame's private chamber. He raised an eyebrow at the thought. Was she offering her person as well as her company? She placed a cedar tray before him and knelt on the other side, lit golden by the light of the flame. "Shall I pour you some wine?" 

He answered her in her own tongue. "I would prefer tea." The glance she gave him almost succeeded at hiding her questions, but she smiled with a cultured shyness and went about preparing the tea. Sephiroth studied her intently. It kept his mind off other things. 

She seemed perhaps a bit more direct than most geisha. In the confines of the small chamber, she eschewed the elaborate ceremony that defined Wutaian entertainment. Sephiroth wondered at the ease with which she did so. If it was a secret skill of hers, to so easily discard what must have been a lifetime's worth of upbringing, he would not have minded learning it. Her continental accent had been nearly flawless. Obviously she was a woman of some learning and knew just how to make her foreign guest at ease.  He studied the way an errant lock of hair slipped over her shoulder as she poured the tea. There was a tension in her shoulders as she poured, as if she was nervous despite all other pretense.

She caught his eyes on her. He had long grown past the instinct to look away upon being caught. She turned away and he almost thought she blushed in the glow of the lamp. She knelt before him and picked up her own small bowl of tea with a tiny smile on her face. He raised his cup and returned her smile. 

The tea warmed his hands even through the gloves. Welcome heat slid down his throat. He sipped without fear of being scalded and set the delicate ceramic vessel back down on the cedar tray. Ayame had not touched her own tea. That was when he knew for sure what her secret had been. 

Already, he could feel the flush, the heat rising from inside to his skin. Whatever she had placed in the tea was strong and fast. His heart began to race. He heard it pounding. His vision grew red, as crimson as the silk on the beautiful, treacherous woman before him. He smiled at her even as he felt his consciousness fade. "I knew," he whispered and slid into a blood-red haze.

He was not angry. No, there was no need to be. If the poison did its job, he would finally be free of pain. There would be no desperate, driving need to hurt anyone else. The cries of the dying and defiled would no longer reach him. His mind would be his alone.

_'NO!'_ The voice in his mind was furious. _'You will not die here!'_ Sephiroth was amused. He knew it would not let him die. His body was not meant to fail under such a simple attack. His heart seemed about to crush itself in the race to flush the toxin from his body. He felt his skin flare with an invisible fire. His eyes burned like impossibly hot coals in his head. 

It faded. The blood color faded from his sight and the fiery rage left his body. He found himself on his side on the tatami floor. The whole thing must have taken only a few seconds. Ayame still knelt where he had last seen her, eyes wide with a shock that was turning quickly into fear. 

He rose from the floor to a seated position and stared at her. "A brave effort, Ayame," he said. She backed away from him.

"It's true then!" Her voice was raspy from alarm. "You are no man. You are a demon!" 

Sephiroth smiled darkly at her and leaned forward. "I might be, Ayame. I might be." 

She scurried backwards in fright, knocking the candle over as she did so. Fortunately, it blew out before it hit the straw. It left the pair in a darkness that was tinted with the blue-green shade of the Planet's own blood. The unholy glow of Mako shone out from the demon General's eyes. 

He could see perfectly well in the dark. The geisha's courage seemed to have gone out with the candle. Sephiroth stood and made his way over to where she cowered. He towered over her quivering form. She groped along the floor, reaching behind one of the stringed instruments as he approached. He smiled and knelt down before her. He could smell her fear, almost taste it. 

He caught her wrist easily as she swung out. He tightened his grip and the short knife she held fell to the floor. She made a soft sound of pain. He watched the way her brow furrowed as she turned away from his bright stare. 

"You never give up, do you?" he asked almost playfully. "Don't you see, Ayame, the battle is over. You lost."

She opened her eyes then, but did not look at him. "I know," she said quietly. "The knife was for me, not you."

Sephiroth let her hand fall and sat back on his heels. "Your city is lost, Ayame, and your country will be as well. Don't die for an honor that will soon mean nothing." Her breathing steadied with his cold words. She turned and looked at him the way she first had. In the dark, her eyes betrayed the secrets she had kept. The confidence and cunning he had suspected shone brightly under his gaze, and with them there was the fierceness of one determined to seize life and wring it for all it was worth, no matter what the circumstances. Sephiroth, a pawn all his life, could only admire that strength of will.  

He reached out and brushed the hair away from her face. "You are a very unusual geisha, Ayame," he whispered. If circumstances were different…but they were not. He made to pull away but she caught him at the wrist and stroked the back of his hand. He leaned closer instead then, to claim her lips and was pleased to feel her respond. 

The circumstances were what they were, no more, but perhaps, just once, he could seize the day himself, without the influences of his tainted blood. He whispered the woman's name as he parted the blood-red robe and pushed her to the floor.  

**************************

**Time:** 4 hrs 47 mins

**Assessment:** Took too long to write this one. Author knows this chapter is even more potentially disturbing than the last, but the challenge is about pushing her limits.  

**Mission:** 83.33% complete


	6. Embracing the Dark

** Embracing the Dark**

She wore a black dress, the little temptress. It flowed behind her as she ran, always teasing. He followed eagerly, desperate to embrace her. Pale limbs, flowing hair and eyes that spoke more than they knew…She promised him peace, pleasure, a life that was his alone. He wanted what she promised, wanted all of her, but she kept running, faster than he would have thought such a lithe woman could. The field they ran on became a soft blur.

She led him into the shadow of the dark city, unafraid. He followed eagerly after her, running full speed around the dark labyrinth. He turned the grim corners, sure he would capture her at the next turn but each time the only thing he caught was a glimpse of her dark dress trailing in the wind. He laughed. She wanted to be caught, he knew it, and then she would lead him to the sweet, dark oblivion he desired.

He lunged forward and caught the hem of her dress before it fluttered out of sight. He heard her gasp and giggle around the dark corner. He spun quickly, his arms open to take hold of her. She smiled as he neared her. He could almost feel her. She reached out and touched his arms and his heart soared.

Then it sank fast. For a split second he thought he had tripped, but he felt himself falling much further than the ground lay. It was dark, wherever he fell, but he lost consciousness at some point during the fall into the void.

He returned to awareness with the memory of falling still in his veins. He gasped at finding himself in a desert, of all places. He lay on his back, sore from the fall. The sun was blindingly bright overhead. Briefly he wondered if the woman had drugged him. Of course she must have. She had lulled him with her sweet body, slipped him something and somehow dragged him out here, probably to die. She had probably stolen his wallet.

He sighed, unable to move. When was he going to learn? Chasing strange women, bedding them, leaving them…surely there had to be better diversions from life than that. Safer ones too, or at least pastimes that would not result in his being left for the vultures to pick over. There was one walking over to him right now.

Sephiroth stared at the thing, vaguely uneasy. It had beady, black eyes and a terrible hooked beak. It reminded him of someone, but he could not remember who. The bird must have been terribly old too. It was the most dried-up thing he had ever seen still living. And its tail feathers were grey. He had not known that birds could get old like that. The vulture stood near his shoulder and tilted its head to look at him.

Sephiroth wished he could summon the strength to move, but his body did not seem to be his own. He did not know what he would do if the bird started picking at his flesh while he was still alive. The vulture only watched him, though, and his unease grew. Exactly what was one supposed to expect from an observing carrion-eater? Whatever the possibilities were, Sephiroth had not counted speaking among them.

"What the hell happened to you, boy?"

Sephiroth winced. The thing's harsh voice was eerily familiar. The General turned away, unable to look the bird in its eye. He groaned as he did so and felt the breeze and the vulture flapped its wings at him.

"What's that?" The bird screeched and kept flapping. Sephiroth frowned and closed his eyes against the blinding light. He tried to clear his throat. The vulture was getting testy and something told the General that it was best not to mess with any talking bird that was not a parrot.

"Someone," he croaked, "Someone did this to me."

"Someone? Who?" The vulture brushed its wings over the man. Sephiroth twitched from the feeling. He did not want that thing's feathers all over his arms and face. He struggled to bat the thing away, but he could barely move. "Who did it?" The bird continued to screech.

"I don't know," Sephiroth groaned. "Some woman."

The vulture pulled back. Sephiroth opened one eye to look at it. The thing had tilted its head in that strange way again. The man was disgusted by the wrinkles on its featherless neck. He closed his eyes again and tried to slip into a welcome darkness. It did not work. He still heard the vulture outside his head. Its claws scratched the earth as it paced and it muttered continuously to itself. "Chasing after strange women, who knows who they are or where they've been? I offer him better ones, but he doesn't want my women. Don't know why. _My_ women would never be out to kill him."

Sephiroth smirked. Who would want a vulture's women? They would be all wrinkly and feathered, beak-nosed and beady-eyed. He stifled laughter. If the vulture had human women they were probably picked clean.

The bird flapped again. "What the hell are you laughing at, boy?" Sephiroth could not help it. He burst out laughing in earnest, hard and long. He opened his eyes as he tried to draw breath but what came out next was a harsh yell. The vulture had put on a lab coat, a little vulture-sized lab coat. The General tried to back away. The bird shook its head at him.

"Honestly, boy, I don't know what to do with you. You don't even try to take care of yourself." It walked over to Sephiroth's side again and began brushing his arms and chest with its wings again. "If you won't look out for your own life maybe you should get an honor guard. You're ranked high enough to warrant it, and from the looks of things, you need it."

"Honor guard?" It was just another layer to Sephiroth's confusion. "It's a little late to be guarding my 'honor'."

"Don't be an ass, boy," the bird snapped. "You need someone to look out for your health while you're busy doing other things now. I've already called in that lieutenant of yours to see you back to your quarters. He was the only one I could think of at the moment." The vulture waddled out of the man's line of sight.

Sephiroth frowned. Did that buzzard actually expect him to spend all of his time with Zack? The General groaned. There went all his blessed silence and solitude. He wondered if he would really have to get a guard, or if he would at least be able to choose the person. The vulture came back with a stethoscope and began to check the man's heart. Sephiroth cringed as the instrument touched his skin. "That thing is cold, you know!"

"Sorry," the bird murmured. It rubbed the thing against its wingtips before placing it on the man's skin again. When it was satisfied, it dropped the stethoscope and pulled something out of the pocket of its lab coat. "This should clear up the rest of whatever it is in your system." Sephiroth bit back a cry as something sharp was jabbed into his arm. The vulture paid no mind. "You should take better care of yourself, you know. If something goes wrong, come see me. I can take care of you. No one else really can."

Sephiroth snorted. "Hell will freeze over before I get help from a buzzard like you." This ruffled some feathers.

"What the hell do you think you're doing now? Honestly, boy, I don't know why I bother!" The bird walked away into the bright white void. Sephiroth heard some commotion not too far away. There were voices, but he could not see the speakers and could not tell who was talking.

"Yes, he's over there. Take the wheelchair in the corner and get him out of my laboratory!" A dark shadow moved over Sephiroth and blocked the sunlight. No, it was not a shadow. Just Zack's big, prickly head. Sephiroth groaned.

"Wow, you really are out of it. Come on, sit up." Zack reached out and helped the General to rise. Sephiroth looked around, dazed and amazed. There was no desert, only the wide expanse of white tile in Hojo's laboratory. He shuddered and looked over to the corner of the room where, sure enough, Hojo himself was fiddling with a syringe. Sephiroth caught the man's gaze in a mirror. Hojo looked away quickly, but it was the soldier who shuddered. He tried to stand, eager to be anywhere but where he was, but his legs were still too rubbery to bear his weight.

Zack caught him before he fell and eased him into the wheelchair. The spiky-headed man leaned in closer as he settled his commander in. "Don't worry. That nut gives everybody the shakes." He grinned, winked, grabbed the wheelchair's handles and pushed Sephiroth out into the hallway.

Sephiroth counted the seconds as they went along. He got to seven before Zack broke the silence. "Sir, I was so shocked when I heard. Imagine if the troopers hadn't found you. What would have happened?"

Sephiroth rolled his eyes, though he knew the man could not see it. "Probably nothing. I would have woken up on my own eventually."

"Sir, you collapsed!" Zack almost sounded furious. "You should take better care of yourself. We need you."

"The war's over, Zack." The General's head slumped forward. "Nobody needs me." Nobody but the old buzzard back at the lab, anyway. Sephiroth laughed a little as the thought crossed his mind. He knew that beak had looked familiar. The laughter grew and he was soon rolling in his seat, helpless to hold it in.

"Um, Sephiroth?" Now Zack sounded worried. "Are you okay?"

Sephiroth waved him away. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Take me to my apartment, then get lost."

Zack pushed a little harder. "You really have no people skills at all, you know." Sephiroth did not deem the comment worthy of reply. As usual, Zack spoke up, unable to bear the cold silence. "Did Hojo at least explain what caused it?" Sephiroth frowned.

"That dried-up old hack doesn't have a clue what happened."

Zack pushed a bit slower as he thought. "Do you know what happened?"

"Of course I do. It was poison." The General would have been surprised at just how wide-eyed his first officer could get. Zack began to babble.

"Sir, that's serious! I mean, it's an assassination attempt, isn't it? Do you know what kind of poison it was? Did you see who did it? We have to launch a full-scale investigation! We need to get you a bodyguard!"

Sephiroth held up one hand and effectively silenced Zack. "There's no need. I know everything and nothing needs to be done about it." He studied his hand as if he were seeing it for the first time. Whatever Hojo had given him, his motor control was returning quickly enough.

"Sir," Zack interrupted his musing. "What happened?"

Sephiroth stilled in the chair and did not reply. He watched the doors fly by, heard the little squeak of the wheels, the light after-hours chatter far in the distance. He had counted to a hundred and seventy by the time Zack pushed him into the elevator. He sighed. That much patience coming from Zack should not go unrewarded. The man might become discouraged from it and then he would never shut up. Sephiroth let the elevator door close before he spoke.

"I did it myself."

"WHAT!" Of course, Zack would overreact. The dark-haired man spun the wheelchair around to look his commanding officer in the eye. "What do you mean you did it yourself? Was it an accident or…"

Sephiroth frowned. "There's no time in here for all your questions."

Zack swung out and hit the emergency stop switch with a mad, desperate grin on his face. "Plenty of time now, sir, and you don't even have to worry about anyone overhearing." Sephiroth began to regret his decision to speak to the man at all.

"It was no accident. I deliberately obtained a rare powder and put it in my coffee." He watched with interest as Zack's mouth moved but no sound came out. "Speechless, are you?"

"Sephiroth," Zack breathed out. "Why?"

The General shrugged. "No real reason. I wanted to see some pretty colors."

"You want to see pretty colors? Take an art class!" Zack raged, then shook his head in disbelief. "Do you have a death wish or something?" Sephiroth smiled darkly at the man. Zack leaned back against the door, apparently horrified. "Ifrit's ass, man, what is wrong with you?"

Sephiroth carefully schooled his expression to blankness and considered how much he was willing to tell the man. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"Like hell there isn't!" Zack's expression turned furious again. Sephiroth felt detached amusement at the situation. If nothing else, Zack's moods were fun to watch. "It's battle fatigue, isn't it? War depression." Sephiroth did not answer. Zack knelt down to look at him on eye level. "You're not alone in this, Sephiroth. You can get help. The company psychiatrists…"

"The psychiatrists are full of shit." Sephiroth cut the man off with venom. Zack stumbled at the quiet force of the words. "Take me to my apartment, Zack."

Sensing that the General was unwilling to say any more for the moment, Zack stood and released the switch. The elevator jerked before resuming its smooth glide towards the residential block of the building. For once, he had enough to keep him busy. He was silent as he wheeled Sephiroth the rest of the way and the General was grateful.

By the time they arrived at the door to Sephiroth's fairly new apartment, the man felt well enough to stand. He had to lean heavily on the door while he punched in his code, but he was able to enter on his own two feet. Zack followed him in. Sephiroth turned around and glared at him.

"What are you doing in here?"

Zack crossed his arms. "I'm staying here till I'm sure you're alright." The man showed no sign of moving and Sephiroth did not yet feel up to physically tossing the him out. He was exhausted and this battle was not worth fighting. Sephiroth turned away with a noncommittal sound.

"Alright!" Zack's grin was obvious in his voice. "Where's your TV?" Sephiroth sighed and pointed the way to the living room. Zack wandered down the corridor a bit, then looked over his shoulder. "Aren't you coming?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "I want tea." He thought a bit, and vaguely remembered that guests were to be served. "Would you care to join me?"

Zack's brow tilted downward for a second as he considered. "Do you have beer?" Sephiroth shook his head. "Okay, tea it is then. Can you manage on your own?"

"I'm not an invalid, Zack." The General went into his tiny, barely-used kitchen, grateful that the room was hardly big enough for two people. He filled a pot with water from the sink. When he shut the faucet off, he heard the soft electric hum of the television being turned on. Sephiroth put the pot on the stove and turned on the gas, reminding himself not for the first time to request one of the newer electric models. It was so inconvenient having to remember where he had last put the matches.

They were not at the side of the stove where he usually kept them, or in the little cupboard above the sink. They were not in the large cupboard next to the cans of soup or the behind the large coffee bottle. Sephiroth frowned. He was too tired to think much about it, but he had promised Zack tea and he needed to find the matches.

Of course, if Zack was having tea, it would be the wrong time to try another dose of the poison. Sephiroth smirked. It was a good one, this time, the poison.. He hardly believed that any of them would really work. It had all become a game now, to see whether the deadly toxin or his tainted blood would win. So far, poison was not faring any better than rope or guns had, to make no mention of the little wrist-slashing fiasco. That last had only left him weak, with shrill screaming from the damnable bloodthirsty voice deep inside him and an awful mess to clean up in the bathroom.

He smiled a little as he continued to tear the little kitchen apart. He would have to find some way to get word to Wutai to tell that poor woman that she would be stuck with her gaijin danna till she could find a way to permanently dispose of him. She seemed to be onto something with this last poison though. He had almost caught the dark lady.

"Sephiroth? Are you okay in there?" Zack's voice broke his train of thought. "I smell gas."

"Then you shouldn't have had chili for lunch!" Sephiroth snapped and went back to hunting for the matches. Hojo's medicine was giving him a headache.

"Aw, that's mean, Sephiroth," Zack whined from the living room. Sephiroth ignored the man. He was more annoyed that he had just caught himself staring blankly into the bare refrigerator. The matches were not in there so there really was no reason to keep staring. Sephiroth slammed the fridge door shut and spun around to the stove again.

"I'm an idiot." He smacked his head and grinned at his silliness. He did not need matches. He approached the stove and snapped out a flare at his fingertips in the gas-filled room.

"Goddamn it, boy, are you _trying_ to get yourself killed?" It was definitely Hojo this time, make no mistake. Sephiroth groaned and shielded his eyes from the bright lights. "You're lucky that soldier was there with you. He pulled you out of the blaze."

Sephiroth frowned. "What did he have to do that for? I'm fire-proof."

Hojo's eyes glittered with rage. "The blast threw you right through the wall. But who am I kidding? That shouldn't be a problem, considering how thick your skull is!" He turned away muttering again. "I should schedule more check-ups for Sephiroth, so I can see him more often."

Sephiroth frowned and sat up. He was a bit dizzy but at least he knew this time what he was seeing was real. Hojo truly was a nut, as Zack said, to want Sephiroth back after spending so many years muttering about 'shipping the boy out so he can be somebody else's headache'. The curtain next to Sephiroth's bed rattled as it was pulled back.

"Sephiroth, you're okay!" Zack was grinning despite the bandages on his forearms. He had more white bandages across one shoulder. Sephiroth assumed that he must have beat the door down with it. "What was it this time?" Zack asked, and his brown eyes glimmered, knowing.

Sephiroth headed off the inquiry with a small shake of his head and a surreptitious glance at Hojo. "It was an accident." Zack smiled. He seemed to accept that. Sephiroth frowned at the man. He had thought that the hallucinations were over, but something was strange about the man's face. "Zack," he began cautiously. "Where are your eyebrows?"

Zack gave him an odd look. "What do you mean where?" He reached up to touch his face. "Oh shit! My eyebrows!" Sephiroth breathed out in relief as he watched the man's fingers encounter smooth reddened skin.

Hojo grumbled from the corner. "They must have just gotten singed off in the fire. Don't make a fuss."

Zack went into hysterics. "Don't make a fuss? My girl's going to laugh her ass off when she sees this!"

Sephiroth stood with a smirk. Perhaps this life was not entirely his own, but until such time as he could successfully enter the void, or at least get as far away from Shinra as possible, this life was all he had, and sometimes it was not too bad.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**Time:** 4 hrs 42 mins

**Assessment:** A bit of a headache to write this one, Sephiroth's experimenting with death, Hojo showing some late paternal interest. May go further into Seph's friendship with Zack later.

gaijin – foreigner, danna – 'husband' of a geisha. Just intrigued by the thought of Seph keeping a woman.

**Mission:** 100 Percent Complete

**Final Notes: **

Thank you to everyone who read this! This was a really fun break from the extreme effort with respect to plot and description that I put into my other fic. I learned quite a few things while writing this and I have your feedback to thank.

This fic started out from the image in my mind of Sephiroth as a small child playing with lab mice. I also would like to think that despite the treatment we assume Hojo gave him, he retained some spark of innocence, life and defiance.

I had the most fun writing the end of the fourth chapter and the beginning of the fifth. I love yaoi and shounen ai but I don't like shocking people too much and I already have a rep for straight romance. There are some things I'm reluctant to bring up in mixed company, so to speak, so I'm glad I didn't completely blow anyone's socks off.

I really like chapter five and I am grateful you all weren't disturbed by Sephiroth's actions. I remember early on, people had no problem accepting that he was a brutal killer, maybe a bit of a sadist, but rape was a definite no-no. The backlash for even hinting at it was terrible (don't know why) and I am glad to see that things are more open in general now.

If I keep writing what I plan to write, I'm going to disturb people sooner or later anyhow, so it's good that this thing (and you all) helped me get over these silly hang-ups. I am not as disturbing as I feared.:D

I could say it a thousand times and it would not be enough, but once again, thank you, all of you!


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